Slate Embraces Slippery Slope: Legalize Polygamy Too

Gay marriage advocates have frequently scoffed at
conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santorum who say legalizing same-sex
marriage will lead to the classification of other relationships as “marriage,”
such as multiple spouses, incest and bestiality. Now some on the left are
happily gliding down the “slippery slope.”

Slate’s April 15th article called “Legalize
polygamy: Marriage equality for all,” proposes—you guessed it—legalized
polygamy. The article’s author, Jillian Keenan, stated that the problems with
polygamy from certain fundamentalist Mormon circles can easily be resolved with
legalizing those families. Using examples of coercion and abuse, Keenan
rationalized that legalizing polygamy will allow children and women to report
to the police when problems occur, instead of staying in hiding because of
their illegal lifestyles.

As with drugs or prostitution, this strain of liberal though
holds that if we legalize something that is inherently harmful or risky, it
will somehow become safer. But there is a reason some behaviors are proscribed
by law: they aren’t healthy for society or individuals. That doesn’t seem to
matter to Keenan, who claimed that whether or not these marriages are healthy
“should have no bearing on the legal process.”

Keenan then appealed to religious freedom, arguing the rights
of fundamentalist LDS members and Muslim families with multiple wives as being
protected in the Constitution in the same way that same sex partners should be.
Finally, Keenan invoked feminism, saying that if a woman “wants to marry a man
with three other wives, that’s
her damn choice.”

What’s scariest though, is Keenan’s view of marriage in general:
(hint: it’s a lot like liberals view of the Constitution). “The definition of
marriage is plastic,” she wrote. “Just
like heterosexual marriage is no better or worse than homosexual marriage,
marriage between two consenting adults is not inherently more or less “correct”
than marriage among three (or four, or six) consenting adults.”

So marriage is a living, changing institution, subject to the
fickle whims present culture. It is whatever liberals like Keenan says it is at
any given moment.

She ended with a rallying cry, “So let’s fight for marriage
equality until it extends to every same-sex couple in the United States—and
then let’s keep fighting. We’re not done yet.”

At least Keenan is honest about what she wants. If you’re
objective is the bottom, you may as well own the slippery slope.

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